


Ithaka, or The Moons of Jupiter

by Quillori



Category: Northwest Smith - C. L. Moore
Genre: Epic of Gilgamesh - Freeform, The Odyssey - Freeform, Treat, Καβάφης | Cavafy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:32:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For completeness, Izmar is on Jupiter VIII, these days called Pasiphae, although I have kept its earlier name of Poseidon, as being more appropriate. Argol is on Io; Sigal one of the Trojan asteroids; Bashak-el on Himalia and Deppe on Ganymede. Actual features of the moons are used solely when convenient and otherwise cheerfully ignored, and all in all I think it would be fair to say I have been a great deal more detailed and accurate with my mythological references than my scientific ones. Do not try to work out what is going on with that spacestorm! On the other hand, figuring out which moon represents the Styx, the Phlegethon etc, or exactly how many different stories about Cyclops I managed to drag into the Argol section is fair game, as is complaining I took those jewelled trees out of Gilgamesh, tablet IX, where they belong, and stuck them into tablet XI, merely because it made it tie in better with the land of the lotus eaters.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



Northwest Smith sat in the Golden Floor teahouse, almost unnoticeable in a shadowy corner, curled in local style on one of the rug-strewn benches that lined the narrow walls, rather than on one of the chairs more prominently positioned to the front for the benefit of the few foreigners who had call to visit the port city of Izmar. Outside the teahouse, the dry and burning desert air hung almost still, disturbed only by the heat haze rising from the golden sandstone walls and flagstones of Izmar, its squares and streets now empty in the relentless noonday sun. Even the narrow, twisting alleys were near deserted: shadowed and dark they might be, but they offered no true respite from the heat. In truth, it was little cooler within the dimly lit teahouse than outside its door, in the great square dominated by the statue of Abukir, now shimmering in the heat, and added to the prevailing heat, the fashion was for a tisane served almost boiling, but the years adventuring between the deserts of the Martian drylands and the sweltering heat Venus had inured Smith to such things, and he had not bothered even to loosen his spaceman’s leathers. His Venusian companion naturally cared still less, and lounged quite at ease beside him, sipping occasionally at the tea, his lip curling in distaste at its resinous, slightly bitter taste. Smith himself thought it not dissimilar to the taste of rosemary, and found it stirred in him that faint longing for Earth which had never quite left him, for all he knew that he himself had chosen to set his feet on a path that must perforce lead to his frequent exile.

A visitor would have found it hard to believe that Izmar had been a seaport many long centuries before it had become a spaceport, or that the sea still lapped no great distance outside its sun-baked walls; certainly no hint of cool sea breeze passed through its massive gates or disturbed the dark robes of the solitary figure who now emerged from one of the many crooked alleys, and started round the sun-baked square, skirting the central stature. For a brief moment he paused, mumbling a quick prayer at the customary shrine set low on one wall, and then he turned his steps unerringly to the unassuming doorway through which Smith and Yarol had passed some 40 minutes previously.

His entry caused a brief stir in the torpid quiet of the teahouse, for his robes marked him as a priest of Asar, one of the chief gods of Izmar and widely worshipped across many of the Jovian moons. He was was no longer young, for all he still stood straight and walked with the briskness of youth, and his hair, no doubt once the fiery red of his race, was now the colour of drifting ashes. His voice, however, when he spoke, was still deep and rich, as dark and sweet as the Izmian wine for which the city is so justly famed (but which, to the frequent distress of visitors, is consumed locally only on occasions of great religious significance).

“The good is made manifest in your appearance,” he intoned in ritual greeting, before smiling appreciatively at Yarol’s angelic blond beauty and adding “and perhaps most particularly in yours: it’s not often we see a Venusian in these parts.”

A waiter hurried over with more tea, asking anxiously if there was anything else he could do to make the honoured priest more comfortable, and there were a few minutes of introductions and polite small talk before Maroun, for that was the priest’s name, approached the topic of their meeting.

“I do not know if you know anything of our early history and foundation”

Yarol shrugged. “You have a large statue of your founder right outside this tea shop - we could hardly have missed seeing it.”

“Yes, Abukir, may Asar the ever-beautiful grant him eternity. But how much do you know of him?”

“Not much,” Yarol admitted. “I can’t say I’ve made a study of Poseidon’s history. As far as I recall, he hoped he’d have more success extending his empire by sea than he’d had by land, so having an excellent natural sea port, he founded Izmar and made it his capital. Other than that, only that he didn’t live very long to enjoy it - he was stung on the ankle by a sea snake while walking along the shore and died in agony. I think his successor did quite well out of the whole maritime empire plan, though. But how does that involve us? If you want to set up a sea snake eradication project at this late date, I don’t think you have the right men.”

“Well, no, I don’t think that would be quite appropriate, particularly as snakes are sacred to Asar, so I expect I might be criticized for that.”

Yarol raised his eyes at that. “So when you say ‘Asar grant him eternity’ you mean he was killed by one of his god’s sacred creatures?”

“One may retain one’s youth only by not growing old: for Immortals that means one thing, for us, another.”

“Suddenly I’m less keen on you complimenting my looks.”

“If you intend to grow old,” Maroun pointed out, “you have chosen a strange career.”

Yarol grinned at him, the brief flare of his smile lighting his face. “Well, I don’t intend to die _yet_. We also don’t intend to starve: do you have in mind some job more suited to our abilities?”

“Indeed. You must understand, Abukir’s rule was not unchallenged even when he was alive, and as soon as he died one faction, disloyal to his memory, took the opportunity to rebel: they were defeated, but their leaders fled, later allying themselves with another kingdom with whom we were at war. Both we and they survive to the present day, although of course we are now a republic, and the enmity between us has remained undimmed - it is with them that we subsist in an uneasy state of undeclared war, as you doubtless know, given the business that brought you here. What I imagine you may not have realised is the depth and long standing nature of the dispute.”

“I can’t say I’d given it any thought; but how does a priest come to be involved in such things? I thought Asar was chiefly concerned with the joys of life, not with war.”

“I am a patriot,” Maroun said simply. “But I’m not just talking about another another shipment of arms, no. We cannot survive forever in this stalemate of indecisive skirmishes, both sides relying on outdated weaponry smuggled piecemeal past the Patrol, the constant threat of trade embargoes by those who seek to interfere in that which should be our own concern only: we may be a small country, but we are a free one still, and will settle matters with our neighbours as we see fit. No, what we desire is a weapon that will end things once and for all time, and that is what we have found. Bring it to us and you will be heroes, acclaimed as the saviours of Izmar.”

“Will we also be paid?” Smith asked practically.

“Seven thousand gold dollars, upon delivery.”

Yarol stared dubiously at his untouched tea. “Does Izmar have so many saviours and heroes, then, to judge them at so low a rate?”

Maroun shook his grey head. “We are a poor country, though not,” he added pointedly, “one ill-supplied with other gunrunners. Besides, it is far more than you could hope to make from your regular cargo, and at less risk too: the normal suppliers are riddled with spies, and the routes you must use increasingly well patrolled even when those who sold you the merchandise do not hasten to sell you out in turn. Returning from a new and unexpected direction you will with any luck pass unremarked. Let us say we will also supply a trade-cargo to give cover for your outward journey: all that you can sell it for will be yours as well.”

Yarol hesitated, his dark eyes caught Smith’s pale ones; Smith nodded almost imperceptibly, a bare twitch of his head. “All right: just throw in some of that wine of yours as well, let’s say twelve crates, and we’ll do it.”

Smith tried hard not to wince at that, for twelve crates of Izmian wine was no small value, and the offer as it stood was far more than he had hoped to profit from even two or three more runs to Izmar, but to his carefully hidden relief, Maroun consented with only a trace of visible reluctance and they had before them the prospect of an easy, well paid job, requiring no more of them than a profitable jaunt to Io.

§

The view spread out below the _Maid_ as she turned and banked high above Io must be accounted one of the wonders of the solar system, albeit one uncomfortably reminiscent of Hell, for much of Io is lit not by the reassuring lights of city and civilisation, but by the fiery glow of its volcanoes, and by the eery destruction they create: not only the volcanoes themselves make gashes of blazing light, but between them lie huge lakes of red lava, dully glowing, and around them vast floodplains of still liquid rock, sparking and flaring with random lights. It is as well, however, that the pilot not be too taken with this vast vista of flame and slag, especially on the descent from the upper atmosphere, for at any moment there may shoot up huge plumes of sulphur, towering spectacularly some 300 km above the surface, a sight unrivaled on any world, or, as Yarol put it, a hazard to shipping.

Settling neatly down at the spaceport in the valley below Argol, they made arrangement for a secure berth for the _Maid_ and then tried with less success to arrange some transport up to Argol.

“Pharol take me! You mean we are expected to walk?”

Smith gazed with equal disfavour out the rock-strewn plain stretching out to the foot of the steep crags to which the city clung. “That’s what they say - anything metal they try to use outside is as good as destroyed in a few weeks - quite corroded away.” And leaving the shelter of the spaceport, it was clear at once that this would be so, for although the first momentary impression of anyone who steps out from the stale, processed air of the port must be of the rotten stink of sulphur, which hangs so heavy in the air as to be almost palpable, it takes only a few breaths to become aware of an acid sting which pricks the throat and the eyes alike.

The road passed at first through a dull landscape of grey rubble, scarred from the blasting required to build the port, but as that fell away behind them, the plain rocks began to be encrusted here and there with crumbling patches of dry, yellow-white sulphur, or darker orange beads and tears where it was still trickling from the stone like amber; gradually these spread and joined until it seemed almost as though the landscape were caked thick with salt, dyed in places with long stains of orange. Randomly scattered and concealed between the rocks were fissures, which would emit at any moment gusts of foul-smelling steam, and below them were sticky pools of molten brimstone, glowing an orange so deep as to be nearly red.

The land at first seemed barren, but sometimes they noticed little red or orange creatures scuttling away on many legs, disturbed by their passage, or black scorpion-like things poised stationary on the little jagged rocks, with tiny blood-red stingers; sometimes, too, what seemed a small patch of yellow would take wing and reveal itself a flock of some delicate, flittery thing that seemed too frail for such a harsh land. Only as they approached the mountain foot was there sign of any larger life, for it was here the road from the port met up with various paths from the sulphur mines upon which much of the wealth of Argol depends, and the final section of the journey was in the company of almost a hundred returning miners.

They were a fearsome sight, the miners: seven or eight feet tall and muscular, with thick, hard skin that would make even a Martian drylander’s seem soft, their long hair and their beards a profusion of wiry curls the colour of cooling lava, the heavy tramp of their feet as they marched in line like muted thunder. Each carried his day’s work in massive panniers slung across his broad shoulders and as they passed you could see even their near-impervious skin was marked all over with the scars and brands and acid burns of their dangerous trade, for not only the scorpions and wild beasts of the Ionian desert await the incautious wanderer, but the sudden plumes and jets of acidic smoke and boiling geysers that spray up without warning; then too, the largest and most prized formations of sulphur are to be found submerged in near-boiling pools, or on the steep and treacherous slopes of the crater lake - the desert plain below Argol being itself the remnants of a massive volcano - and the central lake, like some other surrounding pools, is not of water, dangerous only in its heat, but of the strongest acid.

The city of Argol looks of a piece with the mountains, its walls being formed from huge blocks of local stone, of such inhuman size they seem more some natural feature, carved only by the elements, than the work of deliberate art. Within the walls, the city itself is built of the same stone, and though the buildings are on a somewhat smaller scale, they all extend down into the living rock, so that half the city is hidden underground in a network of caverns part natural, part created.

The main market is mostly above ground, in a complex of halls near the main gate, and it was there Smith and Yarol were to meet their contact, although they saw no reason to seek him out before they had found a very satisfactory price for their cargo of wrought silverware and the prized Izmian wine (excepting only those bottles they had reserved for their own pleasure). Their contact, an Ionian by the name of Berrat, seemed at first sight a monstrous figure, tall even for Io, with a voice more suited for shouting through a storm than for conversing, and an imposing visage - heavy browed, with the hard, iron-grey teeth of his people and a disconcertingly long tongue, like that of some dangerous leonine creature; he proved, however, an amiable though talkative man, who set to showing them around with all the dedication of a guide expecting a generous tip. Indeed no effort of either Smith or Yarol to interject any question about the actual purpose of their meeting met with even the slightest success: Berrat’s loud, rumbling voice overrode them, and their tour continued firmly on, uninterrupted.

“And these are called netjer - they’re quite white on the tree you know - I should say shrub, really - and hard as anything. We soak them with a kind of salt, which turns them this pinkish colour you see and softens them a little. Here, let me buy you a bag - you’ll find them quite invaluable - if the air here troubles you just peel one of these and suck it and you’ll be better in no time. And over here you can see our famous cloth - not dissimilar at all to your Earth linen, except much tougher of course - no other fabric will last as well. And this is some of our bronze-work - do note the delicate etching. That’s what I’m involved with, making the acids we use for it. I expect you’ll be wanting to see the furnaces now, where we forge the bronze and iron?”

Smith was about to deny any such interest, having rather lost patience with the unexpected tour, when he saw the nervous, imploring look on Berrat’s broad face, sitting strangely on his fearsome looks and quite at odds with his apparently affable manner; seeing that, he obediently expressed a desire to be shown round them at once.

The furnaces were kept below ground, in some of the system of caverns beneath the city.  
The tunnels between the entrance to the cave system and Berrat’s workplace were dark, save where gouts of red flame danced up from cracks in the walls and floor, the heat enveloping them and drenching them in sweat; indeed, these were the so-called furnaces - the natural volcanic heat of the planet being put to use by massive Ionian smiths, wearing eyeguards and gauntlets and little else in the oppressive heat. Deeper into the mountain, the glowing red light was supplement by a more eery blue as gasses vented from the ground and instantly burned, making drifting phantasms of cyan fire, which Berrat laughingly dismissed as nearly harmless, but which Yarol and Smith, lacking his thick Ionian hide, prudently avoided. At random moments the passages would fill with choking, sulfurous steam, stinging the eyes and burning the throat, but a few instants later they would clear again and it was possible to continue. Between the heat and the smoke and the incessant clamour of the smithy, which echoed deafeningly even when it had fallen well behind them, it was a relief to reach the gates to which Berrat was headed, and to pass beyond them into a cooler and quieter set of caves.

Berrat closed the gates behind them and smiled, the tension leaving him as the locks engaged. “We can speak freely here, without being overheard - this entire area is carefully restricted, under direct control of the Ofilindi himself,” - the Ofilindi being the chief scientist of Argol, and a member of its ruling Council, “and everyone here reports through me. We have been working on this project in strict secrecy, under the guise of developing new methods of acid etching.” He nodded a broadly built young Ionian in an untidy lab coat. “This is one of my assistants, Marr. He will help show you around.”

Berrat led them proudly over to a large and complicated contraption of metal and glass - tubes and pipes and nested jars all tangled together - one end of which was positioned over a foul smelling and fiery vent. A safe distance from the vent was placed a bench with many carefully sealed boxes, jars and vials, all labelled in some sort of code.

“We take various substances and throw them into the fire, like so - Marr, demonstrate for our guests - then the smoke combines with the sulphur fumes (and certain other gasses found only here, about which you needn’t trouble yourselves) and is caught in this bell. You will see here the pipes that funnel it away until it condenses out here, and there you have it - that’s all there is to it. Only fifty barrels of this and you could wipe out everything - absolutely everything, right down to microbes - across thirty-five or forty thousand square kilometres.”

Smith stared at the deceptively plain liquid with something akin to horror.

§

Berrat having recovered from his earlier nerves and shown them his work with proud assurance, he clearly considered his part done, and he handed them over to Marr to be dined and lodged for the night, while he himself remained behind to oversee some delicate work he could not trust to subordinates. Smith was still very quiet, thinking of the ease with which an entire country might be destroyed, and Marr took this as a challenge to Argolid hospitality, firmly shepherding them to a lively bar where he knew one of the waitresses, and setting himself to dispel Smith’s disquiet.

The bar, unlike so many Smith knew, filled with hard-eyed spaceman, wary and sharp-gazed even in their pleasures, was instead the preferred resort of the cavern workers, who threw themselves whole-heartedly into the night’s entertainment, with no care to keep their back to a wall or to watch who entered and who left the bar; a hint of violence there was, certainly, an undercurrent of drunken ferocity running through the room, but it was simple and unpremeditated, with no thought of consequences and no one sitting hand on weapon. The wait-staff weaved to and fro through the crowded room, quite unconcerned, pausing now and again to speak with a favoured customer, as unworried by their volatile patrons and those same patrons had been earlier in the day surrounded by the violent dangers of the caverns.

Marr’s friend Gawry came by often with fresh drinks, stopping briefly to joke with Marr or just to lean against the back of his chair, fondly stroking his hair. The women of Io are striking, even if not beautiful, tall as the men and strongly built, but fairer, with milk-white skin that could almost rival a Venusian’s in colour, and somehow the pronounced features of their race give them the look, not of bestial fierceness, but of some ancient statue, terrible and imposing both, gazing unmoved across eternity. 

Marr himself proved to be like Berrat: garrulous and friendly, and quite unlike the first impression of his predatory face and bull-like build. Like Berrat also it proved impossible to turn him off the path of his chosen subject, and he would no doubt have done a better job of diverting Smith if he had not kept circling back to talk about about the very subject of Smith’s unease, the dreadful weapon. There seemed less risk than there might have been in discussing the matter so openly, since the noise in the bar was near deafening, and nothing they said could have been heard more than a foot or so away, but it was not a happy choice of topic: Smith would have preferred to put it from his mind; Marr was chagrined and humiliated to realise he was far less valued as a team member than he had thought - for apparently there had been some technical problem with the weapon, a need for a certain ingredient not available in sufficient quantity, which had obviously been solved, since they had been able to sell such a quantity to Izmar, but without mention to Marr, who did not even know whether a larger supply had been found or if some alternative had been developed; and Yarol, who was at least interested in how the thing actually worked, had considerably less interest in consoling Marr’s injured self-importance. The evening was therefore not such a success as it might have been, and Smith was relieved when he managed to make his excuses and leave, though it was some while before he fell into a restless sleep.

§

He seemed to be walking down a deep gorge, over-towered by sides so steep as to almost lean in, as though they might fall and crush him at any moment. From somewhere in the distance he could hear a great bellowing, echoing and re-echoing until it was impossible to tell whether it came from ahead or behind; instinctively he reached for his ray-gun and was reassured to find it in its accustomed position. Farther on he went, and somehow as he went the darkness grew ever deeper, until it was not some mere absence of light, but a solid, muffling thing, muting not only his sight but the sound of the inhuman bellowing and the peaty smell of the earth beneath his feet; farther still and the air itself seemed too thick for breath, clogging his throat and pressing almost tangibly against his skin.

The unseen ground beneath his feet twisted unevenly, threatening to trip him at every step, and it took every scrap of will he possessed to force himself onwards; only he knew somehow, obscurely, that he must keep going, though to what end he didn’t know. Then at last he saw a faint far-off red glimmer ahead of him and felt a faint hot draught of air touch his face; gradually he realised too that the ground was softer, no longer covered in a scree of jagged stones, and that this was because he was now wading through a sea of ashes.

Suddenly the ground convulsed with a great roar like thunder and a glare of painfully bright light, in which Smith could see for one dreadful instant the walls of the gorge begin to crumble above him, before he was buried beneath their collapsing weight.

He awoke, or it seemed to him he woke, to a bowl of cool water being pressed to his lips, and a soothing, wordless murmur that both promised comfort and disturbed some faint memory of disquiet. For a moment his dazed mind told him it was Gawry who tended him, but then he saw it was some other, who had only the vague look of her, no more really than the same colouration, although there was something familiar about her he couldn’t place.

“Rest now,” the woman said softly. “Nothing can reach you here.”

“But where is here?” Smith asked, pushing aside the water and struggling to sit up, for all that it set his head throbbing unpleasantly.

“This is the Two Mountains, where no one comes, and no one leaves save by the path you walked, which is the path of fire.”

“You mean I have to go back the same way? It was bad enough the first time.”

The woman laid her cold hand on his head, driving back the pain. “Foolish man - you would not survive a second such journey. I did not think to see you survive even the first: none but the gods themselves may pass this way, and even they do not pass me.”

Smith could not have said why her words struck him with fear, for she looked no more than an Ionian woman like any other, and quite unarmed, yet such was the certainty with which she spoke that he couldn’t doubt her. She sat straight and regal before him in the near dark, clothed from the waist down in some black stuff as stiff and darkly gleaming as armour, and quite naked above, save for the heavy chains and necklets of barbaric jewellery wound and clasped about her, fashioned to portray all manner of wild beasts, tusked and clawed and fanged.

“Why do you even think of leaving? You are part mine already, and even had you the strength to depart along the way you came, there is something in you that longs to remain here with me: although you walk the way of gods, you are still a man and therefore weak before me.”

Smith found himself reaching out, almost against his will, to touch her: by some strange reversal her flawless skin was cool as marble, but the heavy bronze chains were warm. Around him in the darkness the quiet, comforting murmur seemed to grow and swell, catching up and echoing the rhythm of his heart. Without thinking, he ran his hand up to tangle in her thick hair, which seemed to move almost of its own accord, winding round his wrist and up his arm; with a sudden thrill of horror he recognised the murmur at last for what it was: the sound of scale moving against scale, and the hissing of serpents.

Throwing himself back he grabbed for his ray-gun and held it before him with trembling hands, while above her what he had taken to be her hair fanned out in a twisting mass of little snakes, their fanged mouths gaping wide and their little tongues tasting the air with obscene eagerness. Now at last he saw the resemblance, and though she was not of the race that still haunted his dreams with terrible longing, there was a similarity enough to fill him revulsion and desire alike.

As he stared at her it seemed as though his vision cleared and he could see her as she truly was, the inhuman coldness of her eyes, the coiling nest of snakes, the stiff black stuff sheathing her hips which he had taken for clothing and saw now was glossy chitin: a scorpions body merging smoothly into the unnatural flesh of her waist. The massive tail arched up and over her head, half hidden in the shadows, but not so hidden he could not see the telson, a drop of venom clinging to its tip, pointed straight at him: like those of the little scorpions on the path to Argol, it was red, the only touch of colour on the black body. The droplet of venom swelled slowly in size, quivering a little before it fell, dripping to the floor where it at once hissed and sputtered, eating into the stone with vitriolic hunger.

Somehow the sudden movement, drawing his stupefied gaze for a moment away from the monstrous creature, brought him back to himself, and he held his gun more firmly, his only possible means of salvation, and sent a desperate gout of cold blue flame spraying across her body. Where it struck her heavy, wrought jewellery, the fire was repulsed, scattering every which way in an explosion of sparks, and it had no effect at all upon the scorpion tail, sliding as harmlessly across it as water; even upon her cold white body it seemed at first to leave no mark, and surely at any moment that great stinger would strike out at him, or she would fall upon him with the eager serpents of her hair - but then at last her skin began to peel and split where the flame played hottest, sloughing off in ashy flakes, and with a knife-edged scream which would haunt Smith’s dreams until the day he died she seemed to fracture open like breaking stone, boiling blood welling up from her core and fountaining out from each rupture, until it formed a great river flowing every all about, steadily submerging everything in its viscous flood. On and on the swelling river flowed, drowning everything beneath its path, filling the entire world with blood.

The reddish morning light was already pouring into his room when Smith arose: his head still throbbed dully and he had just made a private resolution to avoid drinking with Ionians in future and was about to set out in search of breakfast when there was a sharp rap upon his door. Outside stood four men, one of whom addressed him in formal tones, requesting he accompany them. They were lab assistants by their dress, though Smith could see at once from their bearing that they would have been as happy to take him with them by force as by persuasion: no lab assistants stood with such military straightness, nor would have kept such close watch upon his gun hand.

They escorted him briskly through the hostel halls and down into the darkness of the caverns below, stopping at last to unlock a small door, unmarked and out of the way, behind which lay no doubt a cell or interrogation room. Instinctively, Smith straightened his back, his face blank, ready to face whatever might lie within. To his surprise, the door revealed only a plain flight of stone stairs, spiralling back up towards the daylight.

“You’re to go up alone,” the tallest of his guides informed him.

Smith eyed the stairs dubiously: it was hardly likely they intended merely to let him free. “Where do the stairs go? I thought outsiders were forbidden to enter this area?”

The tall guard, who seemed to be the spokesman of the group, looked surprised. “To the office of the Ofilindi, of course. He has summoned you.”

The stairs circled up and up for several minutes, their higher reaches pierced by little apertures letting in the light. At their top was another door, as plain and unmarked as the first, and beyond it a room, no more than medium large and simply furnished with little more than a desk. The Ofilindi himself stood beside a small window overlooking the valley; to his left was the desk, on one corner of which Yarol was perched, unconcernedly peeling one of the netjer. He gave Smith a sidelong glance as he entered, and Smith was instantly heartened to have his comrade at hand. A little to one side stood Gawry, with the same straight posture and measured gaze as the guards, her expression cold. Opposite her was another door, identical to the one through which he’d come; behind it he could here the tramp of boots and a scuffling sound. 

All at once the door was thrown open and Berrat was shoved unceremoniously into the room and the door shut behind him. Gone was the nervously affable figure of the previous day, and the confident showman demonstrating his wares: Berrat now was staring wide-eyed with fear, his hands trembling as he tried to straighten his outfit, trying desperately and quite failing to look professional and unconcerned.

The Ofilindi glanced round at each of the four in turn, before settling his gaze on Berrat. When he spoke, his voice was deceptively mild. “Are you selling us all out for money, or did you aim merely to humiliate and discredit your own countrymen? When I chose you for the project, honouring you above all your colleagues, I thought only of your undoubted ability, and the good reports I had heard of your character. How did we come to be so mistaken about you? If you had planned merely to steal and sell for your own profit the product of such costly and time-consuming labour, it would be a terrible thing, but perhaps comprehensible, if you were lost to all honesty and pride - but to do this, to steal not only the work of your countrymen but also their good name and reputation, perhaps for many years to come, I cannot begin to understand.

“You above all, as director of the project, must know it cannot work until we secure a steady source of kursu: at present there is no possible way to create fifty barrels, or even one. I do not know how you convinced Izmar to pay so much for an untested weapon - I can only presume they were desperate, or fools to a man - but if you think your position is better because you were selling only a fake then you are as much a fool. At best, we distance ourselves from your action, but risk word spreading that we require kursu, driving up the price and difficulty of obtaining it when some suitable supplier is found, and inviting the interference of outside authorities before we are in a position to discourage them; at worst, it will be assumed you acted with our blessing (as I find you have taken some pains to make it appear) and that it is the policy of Argol to sell unreliable and malfunctioning products.

“I saw you once as my protege, perhaps even one day to ascend after me to this position, and yet you throw away your future, and your country’s good name, for nothing better than money?”

It was a strange thing, but Berrat, hints of whose fear had been palpable even before his discovery, and who had been frankly terrified at his arrest, seemed to find some hidden depth of courage, or perhaps he had been afraid for so long that he found when the worst had come to pass that he had no fear left. However it was, he had stopped staring and trembling and now faced the Ofilindi straight on, his face illuminated by the reckless unconcern of those with nothing left to lose.

“What do I care about money? Where would I go to spend it, I who have loved Argol all my life? I hoped to humiliate you, and destroy your credibility forever! If there was anything I could do, anything at all that might discredit this accursed weapon I would do it, whatever the price. How can you stand there and talk calmly of such destruction? That speech you made last week, the tide of prosperity you said you will bring to Argol: it is a tide of blood! Whole countries will choke and die, poisoned by our work, the land made barren and strewn with corpses. 

“I made sure word of the sale would get out, and all would know Izmar had purchased it at great price, believing that they did so reliant on your word, and the word of the Council. There is nothing you can do to me that I will not gladly suffer, if there is any chance my actions will upset your plans.”

The Ofilindi looked almost amused for a moment. “Nothing I can do? I doubt you will speak so casually of suffering gladly by the time my men are done.” His face clouded over again, settling back into a pensive frown. “The question is how may your error be best repaired? Izmar would have furnished a not unsuitable demonstration, if only we could make the quantity required, which is perhaps after all not so impossible as you had hoped - kursu is rare, but valuable only for its rarity and the ridiculous stories people like to tell about its properties, and if we could only find a supply, we could probably secure enough for our needs, funded in part, if need be, by the fortune you abstracted from Izmar in payment.”

He turned to Smith and Yarol. “I have heard of you, and it is quite providential that you should be here: the supply of kursu on the open markets is very small but quite steady, so it seems reasonable to assume there is some reliable source of it; find that source and secure as much as is possible for us and I will pay you triple what Izmar offered, on top of which you will of course get your original payment on delivery to Izmar. Otherwise I fear the best way for us to save face will be to make you our scapegoats: doubtless you realised the value of the weapon you were transporting and decided to steal it to sell elsewhere, meeting some tragic end before the sale could go through, your cargo lost along with you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Although Sigal had once been no more than a small asteroid sharing Jupiter’s orbit, it had long since been taken over by Khnaian traders, who had hollowed it out into a filigree of halls and chambers through which the wares of the solar system passed: copper and tin bound for the brass foundries of Venus; packets of nuari and the ornate pipes inlaid with mother of pearl and coral in which it was traditionally smoked; ebony, ironwood, laurel and red sandalwood from Earth; prick-eared hunting dogs from the edges of the Martian drylands; delicate opalescent glass bottles filled with strange and dubious potions - a gallimaufry of all that could be sold anywhere at a profit, jumbled all together in no apparent order. Through this Smith and Yarol wandered, drawn this way and that as stalls caught their eye. Smith had stopped to examine a bolt of Jovian sea-silk, finer even than Martian lamb’s-wool, and shimmering with shifting tones of deep purple. 

“You ever seen where this stuff comes from?” Yarol asked.

Smith shook his head. “Is it really from shells?”

“Truly it is. I’ve seen them myself - great long things, taller than I am. Have to go down to Jupiter to find them though, which you won’t catch me doing twice. They were all along the shore, looking like giant, pointed clams: you could see them sucking the water in and out - not that it is water down there, just liquid hydrogen - and clinging to the rocks with thick, brown tufts of filaments as long as my arm. You hack the filaments off and spin them, though how they get them this colour I couldn’t get anyone to tell me.”

Smith looked regretfully at the silk, which looked soft and warm as anything, but undoubtedly cost more than all the clothes he possessed put together.

Yarol looked sidelong at Smith, his eyes merry under their long lashes. “I’ve been meaning to ask, are we lost, or are you taking us on a complete tour of Sigal on purpose? I know you and markets.”

“Which of us spent 40 minutes haggling over that knife? And I thought I’d never get you away from that perfume seller. Whatever did you find so fascinating there?”

“He was telling me where the ingredients came from; I hadn’t even heard of half the places. But you promised me dinner, and I’d like to think you know where to find it.”

Smith laughed, and led the way out of the main halls towards the maze of smaller rooms in the centre where the lodging-houses were. The passages here were more cramped and poorly lit, nothing like the splendid lodgings patronised by the richest merchants, but there was the inviting smell of roasting meat and the sounds of revelry: the rattle of dice, the slap of cards on a table, sudden shouts of laughter and snatches of song.

The lodging-houses were all of similar design: a short entrance hall giving onto a smallish central court, generally set with tables or benches and serving as restaurant, bar and gaming house combined, and a hive of small bedrooms encasing it. Some few pretended to more opulence, with decorated tables in the courtyard and servants who would, for a price, be as attentive as required, although behind the tawdry decorations there was little to set them apart from their neighbours.

The particular lodging for which they made was little more than an unmarked door off one of the narrowest alleys at the very heart of Sigal. Most of the streetlights, already few in number, had failed, so the lane was lit only with fitful pools of light from half open doors or poorly shuttered windows; it took some while to find the right door in the right alley, although in that time they had amassed a number of invitations to sample the various offerings of rival houses.

Making their way at last into the courtyard of the lodging-house, they found it plain but obviously popular with the trading station’s poorer workers: the long benches were solid and unadorned, there was little to drink beyond the cheapest type of segir whisky and nothing to smoke, and the only entertainment was a few desultory card games being played for a handful of coins; nonetheless, it was clean and cheap, and there was a brazier set up by one wall, emitting both clouds of smoke and the delicious scent of roasting meat. 

Hearing them enter, a figure half veiled in the cooking smoke turned from the spit and approached them. She was a small, dark-haired Khnaian woman, still young by her looks, although her expression was hard-edged and wary. She viewed Smith’s lean, scarred face and their spaceman’s leathers without favour.

“We’re not wanting your sort of trouble here.”

Yarol bestowed on her his most charming smile, his face a misleading picture of innocence and his voice at its sweetest. “We want only a bed for the night, and dinner, just like anyone else.”

Azru’s eyes softened slightly. faced with that coaxing murmur that is the common wealth of true Venusians. “Perhaps if it were just you, but I don’t like the look of your friend at all. You can see at a glance how long he’s been working the spaceways, and I don’t trust a man that’s left his home behind for good.”

“But Azru, don’t you know me?” Smith asked in pained surprise. “Northwest Smith. It hasn’t been so very long, surely?”

She looked at him searchingly, her dark eyes sweeping him searchingly from head to foot,  
taking in everything, before rising again to meet the steel edge of his no-coloured eyes. She sighed unhappily. “I wouldn’t have known it. You’ve come a long way, my boy, and maybe by paths you’d better have left alone. But come and sit down and tell me what brings you here.”

Dinner having been served, a simple meal of meat and vegetables, grilled plainly but fresh and of decent quality, Smith explained something of their job to her.

“We need to find this thing called kursu - it’s a sort of dark liquid, very rare and expensive. You can buy little vials of it sometimes, but I’m looking for a much larger amount. I thought if anyone knows where it really comes from, it would be you - what trader doesn’t come occasionally to Sigal? And from what I’ve heard there’s nothing known on Sigal that you don’t get to hear about.”

Azru shook her head. “You think too highly of me; I keep a few rooms and a tavern, that’s all.”

“No,” Yarol interjected, his dark eyes bright with realisation: “I think I’ve heard of you too. There’s no name on the door, but this is the Tavern of the Four Winds, isn’t it? And you’re said to have secrets borne to you be the very air itself. I expect it’s mostly your patrons, though - cleaners and maintenance crew and porters go everywhere, and no one pays them much mind.”

“Not as innocent as you look, are you? But nothing good will come from what you’re asking and I won’t send the boy off looking for his own death.”

Yarol ran his eyes thoughtfully over Smith. “Doesn’t look like a boy to me.”

Smith caught Azru’s hand. “Come on, for old time’s sake. You know I’ll go anyway, with or without your help.”

“You’d be wiser to give it up. There’s a room here for you if you want, food, clean clothes. Why hare off after adventure? Look at the people around you: they have families, children they love, free time of an evening. What more do you think you can have from life?”

“I’d be dead bored in a week,” Yarol said flatly. “And only that long because this is a trading post.”

“It’s you then, leading my boy astray? To think he was the one who worried me when you came in.”

“I can lead myself astray just fine, Azru, you know that. And I couldn’t have hoped for a better companion and parner than Yarol.”

“Very well,” Azru said, defeated. “Stay here for the night and I’ll see what I can find for you by morning. But that’s it. Don’t come expecting me to help you again if you haven’t mended your ways.”

The room they were shown to was small and shabby, with a narrow bed, on which Yarol settled. “Do you think we can trust her?”

“I hope so.” He looked over at Yarol, who was examining the knife he’d bought, turning it so that what light there was played on its amber handle, reflecting spots of warm colour on the bare walls. “It’s strange. I’ve spent a lot of my life in rooms like this, and I’ve never minded, but I’d get to hate it soon enough if I decided to just stay in this one.”

Yarol looked up at him in amazement. “But why ever would you do a silly thing like that?” 

“Well, when you put it that way.” He sat on the side of the bed and looked down affectionately at Yarol. “All the same, I don’t quite like this job. But if we quit, that’s Io and Poseidon both where we won’t be welcome. No sense making more enemies than we have to. And the money’s good.”

Yarol stretched contentedly beside him, like some half-tamed jungle cat. “Exactly. And anyway, I’m curious about this kursu now. No backing out before we know more about it. Let’s hope your tavern keeper comes through.”

§

“I will cross the ocean  
I will cross the desert  
But the waters of death are deep  
Oh sailor turn home again”

Smith looked up from the book he was reading. “If you must sing while you work, can’t you find something jollier?”

Yarol, who was engaged in recalibrating the Maid’s navigational systems, slotted a sensor array back in place with some satisfaction. “It was your Azru who put me in mind of it. I never heard such dire warnings about a simple trip to Ganymede: now if she’d advised us to take something warm there would have been some sense to it. Anyway, I’ve got the short range sensor working again, so we should start to pick up one of the nav beacons soon.”

“Funny thing the whole system shorting out like that. I had it serviced just before we went to Izmar last, and it was fine then.”

Yarol fitted the cover panel back in place and began to tidy away his tools. “It looks to me like we’re on the very edge of a space storm; it was probably a stray pulse from that.”

“Just so long as we stay on the edge. If it’s strong enough to knock out our navigation from this distance, I’d hate to be caught in it.”

Yarol looked thoughtfully at the faint greenish flicker outside the forward port, where the stream of charged particles was striking the shielding. Even as he watched, the colour grew stronger and began to form forked tracings along the shields. “I don’t like our chances of keeping out of it, not unless we can pick up a beacon and find a port to head to.”

Nor was he wrong. Within half an hour the first front of the storm was upon them, buffeting the vessel to and fro and arcing vivid green light across the port windows. The sensors stayed stubbornly silent, and they were both aware that the Maid, while an excellent ship for slipping past the Patrol and arriving in ports with pleasantly little fanfare, was not at all the sort of vessel in which to ride out a bad storm. Nonetheless, they had little choice, for the storm grew steadily worse: the external points of the ship were already picked out in that violet glow that spacemen call spirit-lights, which presage the worst ionic perturbances, and shifting patterns of sea-green and blue-green and carmine washed over the body of the shields, merging into one another in an aurora of destruction. The Maid was shuddering constantly now, even when she wasn’t being slammed to one side or another by the eddying forces, and every few minutes she would drop without warning or be thrown up or to the side with such violence it seemed impossible to believe she wouldn’t break apart. The air had taken on a burnt, electrical smell, and static sparked along every surface. The buzz of the shields had risen to audible levels, and then still louder, drowning out the worrying hiss and splutter as stray energy pulses surged through the control panels, and for some moments drowning out also the quiet chiming indicating the presence of a navigation beacon.

Yarol examined the readout. “It says it’s marking the direction to somewhere called Artachia. Never heard of it.”

A particularly violent convulsion flung the ship to starboard then dropped her down with a sickening judder.

“Still, it must be better than this. Shall we head for it?”

Smith looked dubiously at the heading, which would take them farther into the storm, but there seemed no other choice, and he found as the minutes passed the steady presence of the beacon before them was a reassurance, tempering the terrifying savagery of the spacestorm into a mere obstacle to be overcome. The lights playing across the shields were pulsating now with the vivid colours of a fever dream, through which the forked green lightning traced sharp edged patterns. Even as he watched, the glowing bolts thickened and joined, gradually feeding into each other and growing more permanent, until the ship was encased in a winding cage of electric green, the individual lines softening as they swelled and the pattern losing its hard edges and growing ever more sinuous, thick tongues of flickering lightning snaking through the wheeling colours of the storm aurora.

It was near impossible to make anything out beyond the violent colours of the shields, but at the last moment Smith half saw, half sensed from some deep instinct of self preservation, a darker form beyond the lights and wrenched the ship aside, and then again as another, similar form loomed ahead, and yet another: with mounting horror he realised they had steered straight into a meteor field. 

The Maid took a glancing blow and spun aside; cursing, Smith wrestled her back under his control and swerved desperately as another, larger meteor bore down on them. An eddy in the storm cast them sideways and almost crashed them against one of the massive, pitted rocks, before plucking them up and flinging them away again. Even as he struggled with the controls, he could hear the steady, inviting chime of the signal beacon, seemingly coming from the very heart of the meteor field. Wrenching the ship around, he fought away from its illusory safety, for he had realised, too late, that the signal must have been set up by that most cold hearted breed of pirate, the wreckers who haunt storm-lashed stretches of space, leading ships to their destruction and afterwards pillaging their remains, but the force of the storm was against him, and dragged them backwards into ever greater danger.

The green serpents of lightning round the ship were pulsing ever brighter, and glancing over at Yarol in their ghastly light he caught his fierce grin and saw his dark eyes alive with reckless excitement. The veering currents of the storm caught up and dropped the ship almost at random, so that Smith had to steer as much by instinct and luck as by skill, and the huge stone things through which they tumbled were equally seized up and sent flying in an unpredictable melee. Again and again it seemed they must be dashed to pieces, or else break apart from the sheer force of the storm, but at last the ferocity of the magnetic currents started to fade, and the colours dancing and sparking across the shields dimmed and began to die away. They had been carried well out of the meteor field, and now as storm spent itself, the great rocks that had been carried along with them ceased to be hurled to and fro and fell into their normal, regular courses, which could easily be evaded in the failing current. Soon they were out in open space again, jarred and shaken but unharmed, although it was impossible to be sure what damage the Maid had sustained, and they still had no navigation beyond the short range sensors.

It was therefore with some relief that they picked up another beacon, claiming to mark the way towards another port unknown to either of them; this time the signal proved genuine, and they passed cautiously along the marked route from beacon to beacon until they arrived at a small moon was but a single city, at which they could stop to make repairs.

§

Yarol looked around with approval. “Have you ever seen a prettier city to come on by chance?”

It was just after dawn, and the pink and gold light spilling down the streets blushed and gilded the white villas and colonnades that led gently down from the spaceport to the sea shore. Everywhere the eye fell, along the streets and in sudden courtyards and in the spacious, terraced gardens, there were blue-leaved trees with little green and red fruits; the windows were all set with delicate filigree grilles, which glowed richly in the early sun; grey and agate vines curled around the delicate pillars and arches, their soft tendrils weaving in and out of the pierced stonework; seaward, a light mist still lay upon the ocean, so that the city seemed to rise from a sea of rose-tinted clouds. In all justice, Smith had to admit he had seen nowhere to match it.

The people too were charming, with the innocent friendliness to strangers you sometimes come upon only in the most remote and unvisited places. It didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility that the technicians at the port would refuse payment for their repair work: certainly, they had no thought of overcharging visitors who could not hope to go elsewhere. The few townsfolk they passed up at such an early hour smiled at them and waved a greeting. It was, in all, a veritable paradise to find unexpectedly in their hour of need.

Smith stopped to examine one of the trees in passing: their chief beauty were their leaves, a rich cobalt, dark on the older foliage, brilliant and glossy on the new, unlike any he had seen elsewhere. Otherwise they seemed quite normal: the slim, straight trunks looked almost mottled where the old, rough bark was constantly sloughing away, revealing the new, and the very tips of the branches set with large numbers of little oval fruit, hard green and ripe ruby red on the same tree, for all the world as though the tree had been hung all over with little gemstones.

As they made their way through the city, the sun rose higher and the streets began to fill: women in lightly wrapped, gauzy dresses and innumerable gold bracelets; laughing children playing with brightly painted toys; handsome, dark-eyed men strolling in groups through the colonnades or tending to the gardens. Hailing one of these last, they asked where they might find breakfast, and with the same immediate friendship as his compatriots he at once invited them to join him as his guests, leading them down to a sunken courtyard surrounded by columns: on benches under the colonnade and on the steps down to the central square were laid cushions, and already here and there were sitting little groups taking an early breakfast.

The central courtyard was built around a large pond, filled with a myriad of white lotuses, whose gentle scent perfumed the air. The large, square pediments on which the slim columns stood were all inlaid with mosaics in brilliant colours: carnelian, lapis lazuli, red and yellow jasper - every colourful stone which could be mined.

“Please,” their guide said expansively. “Make yourselves comfortable here, and feel free to eat and drink as you please: you are our guests here.”

“And where, precisely, is here?” Yarol asked. “We were taken quite off our course in the storm.”

“This is the city of Bashak-el,” the man said proudly, “the only city on Himalia, and, I believe, the only city anywhere to offer such a sweet and easy life. But here, you must be hungry, there will be plenty of time to talk after breakfast.” So saying, he beckoned one of the servers who were circulating with pitchers and trays and set before them plates of the red fruits and glasses of plain, cool water. 

Smith tried one of the little fruit, which was sweet as honey and somewhere between a date and a plum in flavour. 

“The city is named for this fruit: it grows nowhere else, and is our chief sustenance. As you see, it can be eaten fresh, but we also pickle the unripe fruit and the seeds can be ground up and made into a type of bread. It is so nutritious we hardly bother to grow anything else - just fruit and water is sufficient for us.”

Yarol shook his head philosophically at that. “I suppose no paradise can be quite perfect.”

“No, I assure you, Bashak-el is unmatched.” The man’s face took on an expression of great seriousness. “Here we all live together in amity, without any jealousy or envy whatsoever, not eaten away with longing for what someone else may have. We know what it’s like elsewhere: brothers fighting with brothers, friends with friends, everyone trying to take advantage of everyone else, so laws and traditions and contracts alike are ignored and abandoned. But here, in our little backwater, we want for nothing we don’t already have, and live peacefully.”

Smith and Yarol shared a glance: it was clear the man believed what he was saying, and spoke from something more than mere local pride, and there was certainly nothing to be gained from voicing disbelief when he was prepared to be so hospitable, so they expressed polite interest, and the man expounded happily on the many beauties of Bashak-el, from its gardens and its shoreline to its great library - now valued mostly for the grace and style of its architecture, but once a great repository of learning, and still open to any who wished to temporarily abandon the sunlit charm of the city for its musty depths. Yarol having expressed a desire to see it out of one of his unaccountable Venusian whims, their host led him off to admire it, leaving Smith to enjoy a lazy morning watching the sea-breeze play through the lotuses and the local inhabitants pass to and fro. Occasionally someone would pass by with more fruit or water, so that the time passed easily and pleasantly, with no need to stir himself for any particular purpose.

The pediment nearest to where he was sitting was inlaid with a pattern of lapis blue lotuses and little, pointy nosed fish that seemed almost to dart amongst them, so realistically were they designed. Indeed, the flowers looked as if they might at any moment start to sway and flutter in the breeze, and Smith could have sworn a brightly jeweled dragonfly darted past, just at the corner of his vision. The day was heating up, and the inlaid water looked coolly inviting; he could almost catch the quiet susurration of its ripples, just on the edge of his hearing, and he fancied if he reached out his hand it would pass through the solid stone to touch the cool water. 

The first shock of it would be cold against his skin, but no more than was pleasant on such a day, and it would be easy to strike out past the thick growing lotuses and the darting, curious fish, out into deeper water where he could dive down into the darkness, swimming through thick forests of tangling kelp and knotted water weed, and out past that into still deeper water, lit only by glancing sun beams piercing fitfully into the gloom. Here along the sandy bed might be found huge stone blocks like masonry, covered with waving fronds and clustered sea shells, and paths striking straight between them; there too were other, narrower ways, twisting and uncertain, filled with shoals of little shimmering fish, glinting silver in the flickering light, and here and there larger fish, still against the stone, their fins fanned out like red sea fronds. The little, turning ways and the broader streets led on and deeper, the lighting dimming slowly towards darkness, when he reached a large and open expanse, stones rising up around, all encrusted with shells and purple sponges: there before him, towards the centre of the square, garlanded lightly with drifting water weed, lay cracked and broken the great statue of Abukir, one half of its face towards him, a little crab posed insouciantly upon its nose. And yes, there behind him he could see dimly on the wall the remains of a shrine, now filled deep with sea life, a sprouting coral where once the god had stood. This, then, was Izmar, or had been in some past age, before some unknown cataclysm had sunk it beneath the sea. Smith found he could feel no curiosity, there beneath the weight of time and water, at what great disaster could have befallen the city, or for what reason it had been destroyed: instead he floated hither and yon, like a substantial ghost, accepting that this was in time the end of all things.

The flow of the tide caught at him and pulled him on, down past the remnants of town and temple and city wall, all the ruins of greatness and the broken remnants of a civilization lost ages since. Here a long worm-like thing, pink and flabby, wound in slow consumption round the last rotten beam of some old door; here shiny, bloated things proceeded with nightmare slowness through the mud on blind protuberances which might have been legs, or tentacles, or feelers, one end of their swollen bodies fringed with small, branching parts that sucked and mouthed the ooze through which they marched; here fish grown strangely amorphous, with bulging, blobby features, ill-formed and pallid, hung like corpses in gaping, empty doorways; and somewhere down deep beneath the mud and ooze, still hidden from his sight, something, he knew not what, moved steadily and with purpose, snaking a sinuous path ahead of him.

Sinking ever downwards, away from the last of the light, he saw around him begin to gather grey, sliding shapes, now visible, now hidden, and the glint of eyes. Once or twice a shadow passed closer and he could glimpse a gaping mouth thrust open, set upon set of teeth, the powerful twitch of smooth muscle under the ashen, leathery skin. Still they circled, out and in, weaving around him like some shadowy guard of honour, each pass a little closer, crowding round and - and he startled up, awake, back on the courtyard steps, Yarol’s hand on his shoulder.

“Have you been asleep all this time? I thought you would be getting bored waiting for me.”

Smith shook himself, trying to shake off the oppressive weight of the remembered dream, the unpleasant presentiment of death and disaster lurking in every corner. Glancing down at the plate, he saw the fruits were already overripe, disintegrating, touched here and there with white and grey mould; for a moment he thought the dream still hung about him, but when he prodded one he found they were in truth already rotting.

“Don’t keep well at all, do they?” Yarol said cheerfully. “Luckily if you lay them out in the sun you can dry them, and it’s the dried ones I’ve stocked up on. I don’t entirely trust the work done here - I wouldn’t be happy with a maintenance team that smoke nuari for every meal, so I don’t see why this is any better - but I reckon we can get a decent price for this stuff, enough to cover a proper refit and any repairwork required when we get to Ganymede.”

“I thought you were at the library?”

“I was. Fascinating place, all sorts of records, going back a long time, but they’re not really keeping it up now. I mean, they haven’t let the place fall to pieces, so they must be doing some work, but no one seems to have any interest in adding to it. I wonder if they’ll leave off doing any work but tending those trees in the end, or whether they’ve just stopped caring about history? Anyway, I found out quite a bit about this bashak-el stuff, enough to track down some bags of dried fruit, and also where we are and the best route for Ganymede. Nothing I could see in their records about kursu, though, so we’d better hope we can turn up something when we get there.”

§

Night falls early on icebound Ganymede, and hardly has the pale grey dawn cast across the frozen wastes a feeble light - so pallid and so weak it is as apt to cast shadows as to illuminate - than the shadows have swelled and grown again to monstrous size, swallowing the brief day in utter dark. It was at that balance point between such daylight as there ever was and the fast falling darkness when Smith and Yarol arrived at Deppe, the chief, and indeed the only city of any size, on Ganymede. To their eyes, it seemed a ghastly echo of the pleasant canal cities of Mars, for Deppe too is built amongst a massive system of water channels, although the water pumped up from the deep buried oceans of Ganymede is almost freezing, and the land through which it runs is barren and harsh, with no hint of softness anywhere; the cold is a constant, bone-deep chill and the lash of the stinging, icy wind inescapable.

At first the streets seemed empty, but as they became more adept at squinting through the freezing wind, they saw, half camouflaged in grey exposure suits, and keeping well back from unaccustomed strangers, a host of people thronging the streets like silent ghosts; like ghosts, too, the retreated shyly and turned aside when Smith tried to question them, hurrying away without replying. They were on the verge of giving up when one of the indistinct grey figures turned towards them, not away, and freely approached them. It was impossible to make out whether it was a man or a woman, young or old, but whoever it was possessed a determination and confidence at quite at odds with the other inhabitants.

“I welcome you to Deppe,” said the figure, in a pleasant low voice that left them no wiser as to age or gender. “I hear you have come to us from Bashak-el. For what reason have you left that sunlit place, and come to visit us?”

“We are,” said Smith with only middling honesty, “traders, stopping to make repairs, and to see what goods there are to come by, but we find there is no one prepared to speak to us.”

“It is not our way to speak with strangers, though I myself am prepared to do so, the more especially as I suspect I know what you seek to find. But I can see you are shivering: come into my house and sit down, and I will see what I can do for you.”

The houses in Deppe are small and dark, half dug into the ground, half mounded up, with a step up from the hallway to the single main room, so that the hall acts as a cold trap. Seating them by the wall, their host, who introduced himself, or perhaps herself, as Kwelasija, laid out a simple meal of the kind traditional there: a thick honey-sweet curd from the milk of a wild goat-like creature, one of the few animals to survive above ground on Ganymede, watered wine, a type of porridge reminiscent of barley, and thin slices of pickled fat and skin from one of the multitude of great sea creatures that throng in rich proliferation in the unplumbed depths of the buried ocean, the white blubber stained an unappealing rusty brown-red.

“You say that you suspect our purpose?” Smith asked.

“It is not so very difficult to divine. There is little here of value to the outside world: ivory from the tusks of the pagru, which we hunt four miles down beneath the ice, and besides that, nothing; nothing, that is, other than kursu, which is made from the bile of the pagru, and about which people tell many fanciful stories.”

“Are any of those stories in fact true?” Yarol asked thoughtfully.

“None quite true that I have ever heard.”

Even in the house, the cold was still pervasive, and Smith pulled his pole-deer hide coat closer around him. “I haven’t heard them at all. What is supposed to be special about this kursu anyway?”

“Why, that it grants immortality of course.”

“And yet,” Yarol pointed out, “you say “not quite true” rather than ‘completely false’.”

“The goddess whom I serve forbids me to lie.”

“Another priest! Let us hope you put us to less trouble than the last one.”

Kwelasija smiled dryly at Yarol. “We turn up in the most unexpected places. But yes, it would certainly be within my power to save you a certain amount of trouble, for I see what lies ahead for you if you continue on this quest; or then again, I could give you what you came here to seek, if you value that over my advice.”

“You can supply this kursu easily, then?” Smith asked in some surprise - it seemed to him far to easy to arrive and have it handed to him by the first person who would speak to them.

“Oh yes: much of both our daily food and our income comes from the pagru. They are not, it’s true, at all easy to come by: we must go down the long tunnels to the hidden sea, and there beneath the ice hunt them in special submarines, strongly reinforced to withstand the pressure; the great carcasses must then be dragged the miles to the surface and prepared; but all this we do regularly, for the skin and fat and meat provide food, and clothing and oil to burn, the bones are supports for our buildings and the tusks are carved for sale. The bile also is collected and given over into my keeping, to create a special drink, kiffoussa, reserved for those who serve the goddess, and a byproduct of this process is kursu - we take great care with it, for in the right conditions it can be very dangerous, but there are always people who have heard rumours that there is some substance in the pagru that grants eternal life.”

Yarol looked cynically at Kwelasija. “And how much more carefully could you treat it than sending it away to some other planet?”

“Precisely. And if you had come here by any other route, I would have sent you off with what you asked for as I usually do and thought no more of it. But I fear your return will take you through Argol, where that old snake, the Ofilindi, lies in wait.”

“You know of him,” Smith asked in surprise. “Are you worried he understands how to turn it into a weapon?”

“Oh, not in the least. Those who are fated to die will die, that is no concern of mine. No, the truth is he does not desire a weapon at all, whatever story he may have put about, but rather to reverse engineer kiffoussa from a careful analysis of the remnant kursu, and thus preserve his life indefinitely: were it anyone else, I would have no concern, but if such a thing can be achieved at all, it would be by him. Therefore I am reluctant to aid you, to which you can hardly object, for there is no way the Ofilindi intends to let you continue to Izmar, which will have to find some other way to destroy itself.”

“You are remarkably well informed,” Smith said, a little skeptically.

“I am. Will you be guided by me and turn from your course while there is still time to seek fresh adventures elsewhere?”

Yarol had continued to look thoughtful. “You said we could have your advice if we chose.”

Kwelasija nodded, and then stared at each of them with disconcertingly blank eyes, as one who sees something very far away, or of another time” “You set out by four rivers; long is the voyage to the fifth...” Here Kwelasija paused, staring at them with white, unfocused eyes, and Smith felt a chill of presentiment, as though he were truly in the presence of some dark power. “You have come by hatred and by fire, by mourning and oblivion ... a solitary boatman waits to bear you away or to bear you home. Gather what you can along the way, for there is no consolation for the dead.”

Yarol sighed. “I suppose it is the office of priests to speak in riddles.”

“Do not concern yourself - you have small need of my advice,” Kwelasija said, “but you,” here those disconcerting eyes turned to Smith, “you who search for something you will never find: take care to enjoy the search, for it is all you will have.” 

Smith shivered involuntarily, and tried to shake off a sudden feeling of claustrophobia, trapped in the dark burrow, with the wind howling outside; almost he felt as though he were trapped there, unable to move or speak, but then Yarol’s matter-of-fact voice broke the moment, and his hand was on his shoulder, and they were walking back out of the house and away, and Yarol was observing that they had not, after all, come out of it too badly, even if it might be as well to avoid both Izmar and Argol for a while.

**Author's Note:**

> For completeness, Izmar is on Jupiter VIII, these days called Pasiphae, although I have kept its earlier name of Poseidon, as being more appropriate. Argol is on Io; Sigal one of the Trojan asteroids; Bashak-el on Himalia and Deppe on Ganymede. Actual features of the moons are used solely when convenient and otherwise cheerfully ignored, and all in all I think it would be fair to say I have been a great deal more detailed and accurate with my mythological references than my scientific ones. Do not try to work out what is going on with that spacestorm! On the other hand, figuring out which moon represents the Styx, the Phlegethon etc, or exactly how many different stories about Cyclops I managed to drag into the Argol section is fair game, as is complaining I took those jewelled trees out of Gilgamesh, tablet IX, where they belong, and stuck them into tablet XI, merely because it made it tie in better with the land of the lotus eaters.


End file.
